Linux Top 3: KDE 4.11, Linux 4.11 and Debian at 20

1) KDE 4.11

This past week the newest major update from the KDE Community hit general availability with the release of KDE 4.11.

"Plasma Workspaces delivers further improvements to basic functionality with a smoother taskbar, smarter battery widget and improved sound mixer," the release announcement states. "he introduction of KScreen brings intelligent multi-monitor handling to the Workspaces, and large scale performance improvements combined with small usability tweaks make for an overall nicer experience."

Looking beyond Plasma, KDE 4.11 also packs improvements into the KDE PIM stack and the release also features an update to the KATE code editor as well.

The KDE 4.11 release is the first major update for KDE, since the KDE 4.10 release in February.

2) Linux 3.11 rc6

The Linux 3.11 kernel is nearing completion, with the recent release of the sixth release candidate. As part of his release announcement, Linus Torvalds decided to add some addition color on the state of Linux development as he sees it.

Torvalds moved Linux development from Bitkeeper to his Git system over eight years ago. Since then almost 400,000 code commits have been made.

"That's interesting (to me), because back in the BK days we were approaching the (back then) limit of 65k commits in BK in the three years we used it," Torvalds wrote. "So we've long since blown through that limit."

3) Debian at 20

While Linus Torvalds first announced Linux 22 years ago, the first 'real' Linux distribution has just celebrated its 20th anniversary.

The Debian Linux distribution was founded by Ian Murdoch on August 16th 1993.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at LinuxPlanet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist